Sir Roy Gardner, Keith Todd and their co-investors in Mastpoint appear to have burned through more than £3m in their support for doomed Plymouth Argyle over the course of this season. Mastpoint's annual return has appeared at Companies House this week and it demonstrates that the former Argyle chairman Gardner more than trebled his stake in the troubled investment vehicle. Todd's investment increased by 2.8 times and several of Mastpoint's minority shareholders also doubled theirs.

Although there might have been a good return if the England 2018 bid had been successful, it was a huge leap of faith that ended up in the void. Indeed, even the £2.14m of loans they put into the club that were secured against Home Park ended up being reduced to less than £20,000 as a result of the company voluntary arrangement last Friday.

Using £2.2m as a base figure for the company's initial share capital it is possible to extrapolate how much men such as the property developer Eddie O'Connor and the insurance tycoon Joe Plumeri may have plunged into Argyle through Mastpoint between March 2010 and this year. Todd and Gardner were due 25% of the profits through a set of "A" shares, which presumably indicates they were exposed to 25% of the investment risk. That suggests the second set of "B" shares, of which Gardner and Todd held about 22.4%, were initially worth about £1.65m.

As matters worsened for Argyle, Mastpoint shareholders injected fresh funds for the club's working capital. And as O'Connor and Plumeri apparently upped their stakes from £200,000 to £400,000, Gardner's seems to have risen to £1m, on top of the previous £275,000 "A" shares and a separate £400,000 secured loan he provided in his own name last October. Gardner was at the helm as the Pilgrims sank, but his own investment ended up underwater too.

FA to broaden its horizons

The Football Association has taken steps to mitigate its systemic failures in international relations that contributed to the demise of the England 2018 bid. For all the depressing talk of bribes and corruption among Fifa's top men, the campaign headed by Lord Triesman also suffered from the FA's insular attitude. Having won over Uefa's president, Michel Platini, from his standing start as a former politician – not the most beloved profession of Fifa executive-committee members – Triesman attempted to ingratiate himself with the rest of the committee. He failed. The trouble was, the English are viewed in Zurich as aloof and detached, a sense reinforced by the lack of engagement with Fifa's institutions.

The FA has since been trying to overturn those perceptions, and has conducted an audit of the Fifa and Uefa committee positions it currently occupies, as well as those that may soon become vacant. It will then propose for co-option some of the English game's most respected figures, such as Manchester United's FA board member, David Gill, or the retired former referee David Elleray. Although of course even these good football men may find it hard to overcome Fifa's inevitably spiky reaction to Tuesday's events at Westminster.

Gill out of credit

In a prior hearing of the parliamentary select committee on football governance, Gill was clear about his views for the football creditors' rule. He said: "It's had its day." Regrettably for the St John Ambulance and other serially disenfranchised minor creditors, that perspective is out of kilter with the rest of football. The Football League and the Premier League will defend the rule in the face of a HM Revenue & Customs high court challenge in November. It is a moral maze, but the leagues have an understandable view that by containing the problem to a single club, the FCR prevents a cascade of football insolvencies.

Dein's return proposed

As Stan Kroenke's offer document for Arsenal pledges to accommodate fans' views and not to alter the executive-management team at the club, the Arsenal Supporters Trust is about to throw him a bit of a curveball. The AST's annual members' survey of the holders of the 3% of Arsenal shares it speaks for will address how the club should tackle the team's recent underperformance. Although it would be ludicrous to ascribe it to his departure alone, Arsenal's barren spell has coincided with the enforced absence of David Dein. So the AST is set to canvass its members as to whether they believe his return as Arsène Wenger's line manager would be of benefit. The response will be fascinating; how Kroenke reacts even more so.